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Irakasan War
The Irakasan War was a relatively short, but brutal war, waged between the near hidden hives of the Irakasan and the joint AUR forces. The war ended in a bloody slatemate, and eventual armistice, with suspected millions of casualties suffered by the Irakasan, compared to the 'mere' 12,000 of the allied forces, with untold civilian casualties and prisoners. History and build up The dangerous region of space, generally referred to as the Empyrean Maze, or the Empyrean Depths is a large nebulae, containing several habitable star systems, but is rife with slipspace anomalies and navigation hazards. Much of the nebulae is afflicted by rifts, where slipstream space and real space overlap. These great rents in the fabric of reality are believed to have been caused by combat between Flood and Forerunner forces, using gravimetric and slipstream space weaponry. The result is, in slipstream space, a variety of anomalies, such as nebulae gases, 'corridors' caused by large gravimetric disturbances or fragments of planetary bodies dragged into and the remnants of stars torn apart by the slipspace disturbances. Carbon dating on materials found in the maze suggest there were a number of rifts before the Forerunner empire, suggesting the Forerunner seeked to ambush Flood forces in an already existing region of anomalous space, and caused further instabilities. While difficult to navigate, it is by no means impossible. The UNSC had already mapped a portion of the maze in the late 2540s and planned to install numerous military facilities here, as a fall back point in the event of Earth falling to the Covenant. However, the war ended before plans could be laid into motion, and while a number of UNSC military bases are present in the sector, mostly of high secrecy, few significant military outposts were built. After the war, several independent colonisation efforts took place in the Maze, as well as Sangheili advancement into the Maze from the galactic north. Only a few colonies were built, and for the most part were quiet, back water colonies, until in 2599, the newest and so far deepest colony, San Romero, went dark, with no ships or transmissions leaving the planet. While it is not unusual for a colony, especially in the Maze, to lose communications for a few months, when another, Agrippa went off line. The localised UNSC forces prepared to mount a investigation, with a large mobilisation, when two more colonies went dark, with Green Prairies and Dis Prime, the regional capital, going dark. At this point, the UNSC, mostly preoccupied with fighting on the Remnant front, sent three battle groups into the region, to investigate. Initial Attacks On the regional capital of Dis Prime, the San Romero colony transmitter went off line on January Forth, 0912. Given the likely hood of transmitter or communication failures on new colony in the Maze, little thought was given to it. However, when Agrippa colony went offline six days later, the localised defence force, consisting of a small number of Corvettes, mostly for defensive purposes, was mobilised. As they were deployed to investigate the silent colonies, Green Prairies also went dark, two weeks to the day after San Romero went off line. In a panic, the Dis Prime local government attempting to request aid from the UNSC, but found their own lines of communications were cut. At the UNSC regional control station, Dis Prime was officially reported as dark on the 1st of February. Possessing little in the way of expeditionary military capacity, the local commander immediately alerted HIGHCOM to the situation. Four colonies had gone dark with a quadrant, and no traffic was coming out of those sectors. While reluctant to pull forces from the Remnant theatre, three battle groups were deployed to investigate these colonies. Suspecting a simple communication failure, the UNSC hadn't anticipated the true cause. Investigation The UNSC approached Green Prairies, the most accessible and closest colony of the four, mass deploying the three battle groups, under 'Task Force Azrael' to the system. While military forces were deployed to the surface, small numbers of units were sent to the colony capital to investigate the area. Ground forces found the capital, and the outlying towns, totally abandoned. Not a single human was left in the entire colony, all missing. While sings of combat were noticeable, the scenes had been entirely cleaned, leaving only shell casings, human blood and battle damage. The colonists appeared to have left in the middle of the evening, with uneaten food still on their plates in the abandoned homes. Factories were shut down in the middle of service, offices emptied mid-shift, and even a local scouts meeting was seemingly abandoned half way through, with a half erected tent. Local data had been totally purged, with the security cameras, TV and radio stations and local extranet services completely wiped. What few scraps of data remained suggested a mass exodus, but did not explain why. UNSC forces expanded outwards in their search for survivors. After four days of fruitless searching, the UNSC finally found something out of the ordinary. A number of seemingly random cave formations not listed in original geographic surveys. Several small infantry units went down to investigate, and soon enough, came into contact with the outer Irakasan sentries. The Irakasan Attack As soon as they unknowingly entered the outer hive areas, Marine forces were faced by a volatile assault by a as of yet unidentified alien race. A swarm of large, insect like creatures, of varying polymorphic castes, emerged from the ground, attempting to swarm the UNSC ground forces. While initially pushed back, forced into a close quarters fight in the capital, where they were several outnumbered, and outclawed, the UNSC dragged back the initiative with air superiority and armoured support, pushing this new threat back. Fresh forces arrived to push the force back, discovering what appeared to be a hive built underneath the city. While there was no sign of the locals, these hives were fitted with sophisticated technology, belied by the feral and near suicidal assault by the insectoid aliens. A renewed UNSC offensive takes the hive for study, leaving no survivors. As the ground forces began to take in what just happened, the battle group waiting in orbit detected a number of long range contacts. Several squadrons of unrecognised warships appeared at the outer areas of the sector. The UNSC, hidden behind the main planetary body detected them by chance, using long range stealth drones. As the alien warships approached, the UNSC attempted to gleam as much data on them before springing their hastily devised trap. Eventually, the ships entered effective range, allowing the UNSC force to spring the trap. Caught between the planets moon and the Task Force, the group was quickly overwhelmed. During this short time, the small group displayed excellent tactics, and a grasp of technology the UNSC had not expected, but was nonetheless destroyed in short order. None of the ships attempted a retreat or attempted to out manoeuvre their enemy, but instead focused on a single, suicidal charge deep into the battle group, grievously damaging a number of larger ships. Still reeling from the space and ground assault, the task force dug in. Realising they had just destroyed an occupation force, the commanding Admiral immediately sent word to High Command. They were facing a new war, against an unknown alien combatant. While stretched thin against the Remnant, High Command distributed a number of forces to the theatre, creating a fleet sized task force, with numerous battle groups, frigate groups, cruiser squadrons, army divisions and Office of Naval Intelligence specialists, even a large contingent from SOCOM, including a whole SPARTAN company. The Task Force had a lengthy campaign ahead of itself. The new enemy The Office of Naval Intelligence teams that arrived to investigate the situation had little to go on. While scans of their warships had been thorough, and detailed, little was left of the ships themselves, either too heavily damaged from the withering hail of precision UNSC firepower, or fallen into the gravity well of the planet and burned up upon re-entry, on the ground, there was little information to be gleamed. Most alien bodies were heavily damaged, with no survivors, and the inside of the hive had taken substantial damage during the attack. What could be learned, was that they were facing a insectoid race, with a polymorphic caste system, not all too dissimilar from colony insects on Earth, with a excellent grasp on technology, resulting in a Tier 3 race. However, dissemination of their archives and computer systems in the hive revealed that not only was their language based on a Forerunner root dialect, but that this attack on a number of colonies had been a co-ordinated strike, planned for months, perhaps even years. The data stored included substantial data on the colonies, their communication systems, star ports, major facilities and the annual coming and going of star ships. The information chilled ONI co-ordinators to the bone. The UNSC had been in the Maze for nearly fifty years, and this race, referring to themselves as the Irakasan in their own archives, had been observing them for the entire time. Now, the UNSC faced three issues. First, to take back the three occupied colonies, the second, to discover the missing colonists, and what happened to them, and third, to defend their borders from further Irakasan incursions. The Maze was filled with bottle necks in slipspace, making it easy guard vital routes, but the Irakasan had a great knowledge of the Maze, and certainly knew secret, if not dangerous paths through the Maze. Admiral Ty Iovis knew exactly the risks with the Maze. Having been raised on a colony at the edges, and served in the Navy for decades, his Battle Group was first to Green Prairies, and he had now been placed in charge of Task Force Azrael, and now the burden of action lay on him. Lacking the ability to project Azrael's force over a wide area, he instead set up a number of two ship squadrons of Frigates, to monitor the major pathways. In conjunction with this, the Prowlers in his command began to mind major routes and set up remote sensors. Cruisers were grouped into fast reaction squadrons, that in the even the scout pickets or long range sensors detect a major incursion, the UNSC can strike in force. This plan showed its merit when two separate Irakasan strike forces made their way to further parts of the Maze. One force was entirely wiped out in a nuclear minefield, their ships being reduced to dust in slipspace, causing a navigation hazard, another was detected by long range scouts, then immediately set upon by two cruiser squadrons, pummelling the fleet into submission. While the Irakasan fleets showed remarkable bravery under certain defeat, and excellent unit cohesion, they showed little in the way of tactical flexibility, which would prove to be their down fall, when deployed later in the war. Retaliation Deep space reconnaissance by Prowlers attached to the Task Force had discovered large amounts of fleet movement around Dis Prime. Knowing the Irakasan were digging in, Iovis elected to lay siege to the system. After initial reconnaissance by special forces on the ground high lighted no civilians were present, like on Green Prairies, Admiral Iovis blockaded routes to the system, and then sent the majority of his task force to retake both San Romero and Agrippa. In both cases, it was the same as Green Prairies. The entire colonies were empty. However, the Irakasan had begun building substantial forces on both, their hives beginning to overtake the cities they were built under. Intense, short ranged orbital battles, followed by heated orbital landings and close range tunnel fighting ousted the Irakasan from both colonies. Both times, they fought to the death, but on Agrippa, a single Irakasan was captured. A single creature, partially pinned under fallen rubble, was captured and brought back to the Prowler-Cruiser, UNSC Jawbreaker. Studied intensively on the ship, this creature was found to be barely sentient, but shared DNA with a number of other caste creatures, while others appeared to be entirely different races. Fearing another situation like the Great War, where a hegemony of alien races out-numbered human forces, ONI put great amounts of effort into attempting to capture and study more of the Irakasan. On San Romero, more strange events were reported. The Irakasan had apparently began the process of terraforming the colony to greater meet their biological needs. Rather than using great machines for this process, they used biological agents, introduced species and inert chemical agents in the air to make it, presumably, more like their home world. These effort were mostly stopped by preforming a scorched earth policy on captured regions by the UNSC. Retaking of Dis The stage was set for the Irakasan to be pushed out of UNSC space. The majority of the task force deployed into a mass naval battle, focusing on a pincer attack on the single, but widely dispersed fleet. The Irakasan, unexpected, rushed forward to face the armada, cutting the two pincer movements off from one another, however they trapped themselves with a crossfire. The fleet used a staggered formation, allowing them to safely fire onto the Irakasan fleet. The apparent Irakasan flagship, a exceptionally large vessel with a mass driver capable of crippling a battleship, was singled out and struck down by a co-ordinated LASER strike. As it split in two, the entire Irakasan fleet lost cohesion, and their tight defensive formation began to fall apart. As they ships pulled back the suffered increasing casualties, and were forced onto the opposite side of the planet, opening up for a massed ground invasion. The UNSC showed little restraint with targets outside of the capital, electing to use carpet bombing, or orbital strikes to dislodge heavily defended positions, and open the way for the Army and Marines to attack Dis' capital. As the UNSC forces advanced on the capital, the swarm defending it rushed out, hoping to catch the UNSC off balance. Unfortunately, they ran right into the armoured spear head. While they had armoured units, and air support, it was generally of an inferior quality, and the Irakasan died by their thousands as they charged the line of titanium. The assault soon broke, and the UNSC followed the routing Irakasan into the city, to finish them off and keep up the pressure and speed of the attack. However, once within the city, they counter attacked again. In these close ranges, with the city prepared for defence with numerous tunnels dug to facilitate reinforcement and counter attacks, the Irakasan pushed the UNSC back. Caught in a bloody stalemate, the UNSC would push the Irakasan out of one building, only to lose another, or find themselves flanked. Every inch cost both sides lives. Underneath the capital, in the hive, the Irakasan had not expected a sneak attack, nor conceived the possibility of the humans deploying Spartans to the heart of the hive. The The Spartans burned a path right through the hive, collapsing tunnels, destroying munition depots, burning nests and generally pushing the Irakasan back, with every foot of tunnel lost, the UNSC gained a mile above. The Irakasan, unable to retreat into the tunnels without losing their only real advantage, and unable to reinforce the surface without weakening their defences, found themselves pushed into a corner. While the UNSC Army secured the capital, the Spartan company secured the centre of the Hive, killing thousands of Irakasan in the process. At the centre, for the first time, the Spartans glimpsed the leadership of the Irakasan. A member of the theorised 'King' caste was directing the forces above, and proved to have little self defence when the Spartans captured it, and one of its monumental 'consorts', a female who exclusively bred with the king. As well as that, they captured and intact, and extensive data module containing vast amounts of information in the Irakasan. On the surface of Dis, with the King captured, the remaining forces spread to outlying hive, intending to burrow in and force the UNSC to fight them on their terms. The UNSC passed on that offer, and instead chose to use massed artillery, orbital strikes, bunker busting munitions and specialists from the "Hellbringers" regiment to burn them out. ONI would spend weeks decoding the liberated data, as well as garnering information from the captives. While interrogation proved little, the vivisections and autopsies yielded a great amount of data. The module, however, was much more interesting. It detailed Irakasan forces, worlds, weapon systems and maps of the Maze. From this, ONI learned the fleet destroyed above Dis represented a sizeable portion of their fleet. The rest of the ships were being deployed close to Sangheili areas, or into defensive positions to prepare for the inevitable counter attack. Sending warning to their Sangheili allies, ONI made good on learning all they could of the Irakasan, and give Admiral Iovis all the information he needed to launch the next phase of the operation. The Hive also had one more secret to reveal. The hive had an connection to an outlying structure. The interior contained traces of human habitation, including abandoned possessions and clothes, human waste and some kind of processing facility. The facility appeared to have the housed tens of thousands, though not enough for the the entire colony, sparking a search for other, similar structures. This facility then connected to a space port, allowing for the apparent movement of humans off world. The destination appeared to be a heavily defended world, near the outer reaches of Irakasan space. On the trail of the colonists With a rough idea of the location of the missing colonists, and the location of Irakasan worlds, fleets and facilities, Admiral Iovis drew up a plan to draw their forces away from their defences. Preforming a number of lightening strikes into Irakasan territory, Iovis targeted vital infrastructure, removing industrial facilities, mines, shipyards and orbital elevators. The strikes had little in the way of restraint. Since space, air and ground reconnaissance had shown no human presence on these colonies, attacking forces open deployed orbital strikes and nuclear bombardment, in the process annihilating hives that might of contained millins of Irakasan. In one case, when a direct attack on a planet that held strategic significance for the Irakasan, the UNSC elected to hit the planet with a fully charged Super MAC round. This caused a event of unimaginable power, knocking the planet out of orbit, and removing a huge amount of planetary mass form the northern hemisphere. No less than four worlds were rendered unihabitable during these strikes. As the Irakasan forces began to spread out on the defensive, the UNSC struck, pushing into Irakasan territory. Counter Attack Aftermath and Armistice Necros War